Ed Ricketts was killed by a train which smashed into his beat-up old sedan as he crossed the Southern Pacific Railway track on his way to a market in New Monterey.
He was going to buy a steak for his dinner.
After he and his car had been impaled on the cow-catcher of the Del Monte Express Ed hung on for a few days in hospital. Then he died.
His skull was out of shape, his lungs were punctured and just about every bone in his body was broken.
Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts was 50 years old and was comfortably unknown as a marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher in the 1930s and 40s. He lived in the shack he had turned into a laboratory on Ocean View Avenue in Old Monterey’s rusty and dilapidated Cannery Row.
In 1922 Ed married Anna Barbara Maker in a quiet ceremony. He began to call her “Nan” and along the way they had a son and two daughters.
They lived a hand-to-mouth boon-docks way of life but Ed was happy.
Then they got divorced.
Ed was left alone in his shack and he missed his children.
He turned to drink. This meant that he had very little money but he kept on keeping on and looked after his children, albeit from a distance.
He was buried away at Monterey City Cemetery and there wasn’t much left to talk of, apart from the marine specimen jars on shelves in the shack and some rattle snakes he kept in cages for study purposes.
But he did leave something behind that still matters today … three rules for his estranged children.
And 70 years later, these rules are something all of us could teach our children, no matter how hard we are fighting to keep in touch with them.
Here they are as narrated by his best friend, writer John Steinbeck.
“We must remember three things. I will tell them to you in the order of their importance. Number One and first in importance, we must have as much fun as we can with what we have. Number Two, we must eat as well as we can, because if we don’t we won’t have the health and strength to have as much fun as we might. And Number Three and third and last in importance, we must keep the house reasonably in order, wash the dishes and such things.
“But we will not let the last interfere with the other two.”
Wise words indeed from the 1940s.
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The piano, my favourite musical instrument. My dad, Gordon, made everything he played, all by ear, a special personal rendition, never heard before. This story is very moving and the rules Steinbeck wrote are timeless. In that era, the l940s we made our own ‘fun’ from childhood through growing up. Not many toys or anything technical but the radio. For all mothers or fathers who are Suffering alienation from their children this is a good start for a happy life.
These 3 rules are simple, back to basic, and heart tugging. They mean the future for me as I have been alienated for 8 years. I remember when my daughters were born. All I wanted was to provide them with fun times, life can be too serious, good food for them to get ample nutrition, and cleanliness, because it makes the other 2 possible. Thank you so much for the simple, yet so necessary reminder for a happy life .
Thank you for message Mandi … i hope things go right for you in the future – you sre right, Ed’s message, way back in the 1940s, is simple and straighforward and we should all try to live by it…